


Let Your Heart be Light

by Luz



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Christmas Eve, Christmas Fluff, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Sharing Clothes, adam is extremely oblivious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 19:37:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9199589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luz/pseuds/Luz
Summary: Domestic holiday fluff, because Adam needs a proper Christmas. Secret santa gift for arielmagicesi!





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arielmagicesi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arielmagicesi/gifts).



**I**

 

The first thing Adam was aware of when he woke up was how cold he wasn’t. Winter mornings for most of his life had been cold toes, an icy nose, mental calculations of how long and how hot his shower could be before he left the shelter of his bed. Even his new dorm room wasn’t really the coziest place—the tall windows were great in the summer, especially for his plants, but as the semester progressed he’d noticed they leaked plenty of cold air into the room.

At the Barns, though, mornings were warm and leisurely. It was the third day of Adam’s winter break and he was finally beginning to feel like he’d made good on the sleep debt incurred over finals week. He squinted through the sun beaming in around the curtains to the clock sitting on the opposite side of the bed. Eight thirty-two. He had a bleary memory of feeling Ronan roll out of bed some time earlier to start his chores. Now the faint crashing and thumping that meant he was probably making breakfast echoed up the stairs. 

Reluctantly Adam shoved the heavy covers away and got out of bed. The air was chilly on his skin and he plucked a flannel shirt from the floor and shrugged into it. After brushing his teeth he made his way downstairs to find Ronan whistling in the kitchen and stirring something. 

“Morning,” Adam said around a yawn. 

Ronan turned around to regard him. As soon as his eyes met Adam, the wooden spoon stilled. He didn’t break his gaze. Unless he thought he wasn’t being watched, Ronan did not normally stare this much. 

Adam’s hand drew in self consciously from where it rested on the top of a chair. “What?” 

Ronan’s eyes flickered, and then he started stirring again. “Nothing,” he said. The tops of his ears were pink, though it could have been from the cold.

Adam looked down at himself - bare bony feet, raggedy cuff pajama pants, a sliver of freckled waist, an old t-shirt, and - oh. He thumbed at the hem of the flannel he’d pulled on. In his haste he’d thought it was one of his own but now that he looked at it he realized it was much too roomy around his shoulders, the material thicker and softer than anything of his.

“Oh,” he said. His lips bunched into a smirk. 

Ronan looked over again, eyes narrowed. “Get that look off your face, you smug fucker.”

Adam kept smirking as he walked over to the coffeemaker, where a pot was already dripping, even though Ronan didn’t drink it. A stout yellow mug sat on the counter.

Ronan rooted in the fridge for the little pitcher of fresh cream and set it by the mug. He was, Adam knew, quite proud of the flaxen haired cow he had recently dreamt that gave only cream when she was milked.

“You’re the best,” Adam told him.

“Duh,” said Ronan, and turned back to the stove. He kept glancing at Adam as he poured his coffee and returned the cream to the fridge.

Adam couldn’t resist. “Shame you don’t know where your phone is, or you could take a picture.”

“I never said I didn’t know where my phone was.”

“Do you know where your phone is? 

Ronan scowled. He set down the mixing bowl and brushed some flour off his hands, and sidled over next to Adam where he was leaning on the counter. “Right,” he said, dripping sarcasm. “Sorry the sight of my _boyfriend_ in my _shirt_ is a bad thing for me to like. Sorry.”

It was quite a thing for him to say. Adam puffed a pleased little laugh and let Ronan put him in a quick headlock to ruffle his hair. It was so easy to tell, sometimes, how closely Ronan had grown up with his brothers. Adam couldn’t imagine him without that boisterous, close, roughhouse part of his personality. 

“Declan and Matthew are coming to Christmas, right?” he asked casually.

Ronan took a minute before answering. “Do you want them to come?” he said, wariness beneath his tone.

Adam shrugged. “Yeah. It’d be nice. You know how much Matthew loves it here.” He was doing this the underhanded way, appealing to Matthew’s happiness instead of trying to bring up Ronan’s current standing with his other brother. 

Ronan surprised him then by doing it himself. “Declan’s being a miserable prick right now. That Ashley chick dumped his loser ass. He’s probably watching Gilmore Girls and crying into his multigrain Cheerios right now.” He grinned savagely like the thought pleased him.

“So maybe a family holiday would be good for him,” Adam said carefully. 

Ronan stared out the window above the sink. “Maybe,” he replied.

Adam heard a sharp _tap-tap-tap_ and then Ronan was cranking open the squeaking window to let Chainsaw through. She hopped in and looked inquisitively at Adam before inspecting the counter for crumbs.

“Get ready,” Ronan said over the crackle of bacon. “She won’t be far behind.”

The door burst open with a gust of cold air and Adam only had time to realize he hadn't said good morning to Opal yet when she began to charge at him. He braced himself for the impending collision, hoping the snow and mud clumped all over her knobby, furred knees didn't end up on his clothes. 

Halfway through her thunderous beeline across the kitchen Ronan sidestepped smartly across the space and scooped her up before she got to the table. 

" _Kerah!_ " she screeched like it was the most dreadful curse she knew. (It definitely wasn't.) “Down!" Her hooves struck wildly at the air behind her, bits of ice flaking onto the kitchen floor. Her vocabulary had grown tremendously since Adam had left for college, but she still sometimes sounded more like an animal than a child when she was upset.

Ronan held her close to his chest the same way Adam had seen him hold Chainsaw when she started flapping indoors or doing something else that heightened Gansey's blood pressure unduly.

"You need to say hello quietly," he murmured, lips pressed almost to her hair. He combed a few pieces of straw out of it as he spoke. "He's not in the mood to be tackled."

"O _kay_ ," Opal hissed, finally going still. Adam smiled despite himself. He'd heard the exact same inflection come out of Ronan’s mouth before. He set her down on the floor gently and she shot him a nasty look that he returned cartoonishly. She turned to Adam and rearranged her keen face into pleasantry.

“Good morning,” she said cheerfully. She picked up Adam’s hand in both of hers, and turned it over to inspect his palm. With one tiny finger she traced over the creases that ran across it.

Ronan glanced over and scoffed. “You’re gonna practice witchcraft on him at nine in the morning?”

“You have a very strong head line,” Opal informed Adam. “Probably why you’re still in school.” 

“Hey,” Ronan said. “Rude.”

Opal turned her piercing eyes on him. “Want me to tell Adam about your palm?”

“God da—Opal. No.”

“His heart line is _all_ messed up,” Opal told Adam gleefully.

“What does that mean?” Adam asked, a smile twitching at his mouth.

“Probably that he’s emotionally constipated,” Opal pronounced carefully.

Ronan set the plate of pancakes down on the table with an unnecessary clatter. “Calla told you to say that, runt.”

“She shared her insight with me,” Opal said. “Are those chocolate chip?”

“Duh,” Ronan said again. He looked at Adam. “What are you grinning about?”

Adam shook his head and reached for a pancake. His morning had improved.

 

**II**

 

Adam had never had a proper Christmas. 

This wasn’t exactly true, because his family did put up a tree, and Adam did get some presents every year. Granted, the tree was artificial and pre-decorated and his presents were usually things he actually needed, like a winter coat that wasn’t two sizes too small. He’d never expect his parents to spend unnecessary money on a holiday, though. What really bothered Adam was that nobody in his family ever treated Christmas like Christmas. There were no cookies baking or music playing or stockings hung. No one had ever even tried to make him believe that Santa Claus existed. 

He had a feeling that Ronan’s childhood Christmases had been much different. Ronan didn’t talk about growing up much, but when they’d taken the boxes of Christmas decorations down from the attic he’d had something to tell Adam about almost all of them. A pair of delicate, shimmering ornaments from Belfast, the last survivors of their set. Three handmade stockings with Ronan and his brother’s names stitched on the cuffs. Strings of lights that changed from silver to pale blue to gold and back again. And for the top of the tree, an elegant angel with a painted face that looked eerily like Aurora Lynch’s.

Adam cherished every new thing he learned about Ronan, but a strange melancholy had descended on him as he watched his eyes light up over every object he pulled out of the dusty cardboard boxes. For Adam, fond memories were a limited resource to be treasured. For Ronan, they overflowed every corner of his home, so plentiful that boxes full of them were stuffed into attics only to be enjoyed once a year.

Adam wasn’t about to admit this to Ronan, but the reason he had asked about his brothers was because he yearned to have the sort of Christmas he’d seen in the movies or heard his classmates complaining about. He wanted a house smelling of gingerbread and cider, filled with people who weren’t thinking about bills and work schedules. 

He decided to bring up guests again while he helped Ronan fix part of the chicken run. They’d had so much snow the night before that part of the netting that covered the run had collapsed under its weight. All of the chickens were inside the coop anyway, but they’d both wanted to be outside the house for a bit—even if it meant bundling into what felt like seven layers of clothing to stay warm. Even Chainsaw refused to follow them out.

“Dumb birds,” Ronan said as he groped around in his toolbag. “They won’t come out in the snow because they think the ground is gone.” 

“Or maybe they’re just cold,” Adam said. “Bare feet and all.” 

“Are you suggesting we make shoes for the chickens, Parrish?”

“You’re the one who put curtains on their nesting boxes.” 

“Keeps them from shitting in there. _Science_ , Parrish, I thought they were teaching you about that.”

Adam just shook his head and took off his mittens to pick some nails out of the box. “So,” he said as he watched Ronan hammering away at a post. “What are Blue and the others up to for Christmas?” 

“ _Blue and the_ _others_ ,” Ronan repeated, sneering. “You mean the sisterhood of the traveling threesome _._ ”

“You have a hooved child.”

“So?”

“ _So,_ no lifestyle judgments.”

Ronan took another nail from Adam and held it between his lips. “I talked to Cheng the other day,” he said finally, mumbling around the nail.

 Now it was Adam’s turn to stare. “You talked to Henry?”

 “What, are you jealous?”

 Adam smirked. “I thought you didn’t like Henry.”

 “He talks too much and his hair is an embarrassment,” Ronan said. “But he knows a shitload about organic farming. Fuck if I know why. He said they’ll be in Henrietta next week to see Blue’s family.”

 “Good, so we’ll see them then.”

 Ronan was concentrating on the next nail. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess.”

 Adam didn’t say anything. He wanted badly to invite everyone to the Barns, to show them the life he’d ended up part of. But the Barns didn’t belong to him, and he wasn’t sure how comfortable Ronan would be letting everyone descend on his home during a time of year with so many memories hanging around it.

 And anyway, he reasoned to himself, it wouldn’t be so bad to have a quiet Christmas with just Ronan and Opal. It would be her first Christmas ever.

 They finished securing the netting over the run and Ronan shoveled a little patch of bare ground so the hens could stretch their legs. By the time they got back inside, stomping away the snow that had drifted into the folds of their clothing, Adam was freezing. As he struggled to undo the laces of his borrowed boots, Ronan disappeared into the living room and reappeared almost as quickly, grinning.

 “Guess what,” he said, “my hooved child is asleep. Like, _out_.”

 Adam bit the inside of his mouth to contain his smile. “I’m awful cold. We’re gonna have to figure out some way to warm me up if you’re trying to get me out of my clothes.”

 “Yeah, I’ve got some ideas,” Ronan said. He came over and brushed the snow from Adam’s shoulders. Adam shrugged out of his coat and heard the sharpness of Ronan's next breath.

 “This again,” Ronan said, tracing a finger over the collar of the flannel.

 “It’s warm,” Adam said. The smile was tugging at the corner of his mouth now.

 Ronan’s eyes were dark, “Okay,” he said. “Maybe you don’t have to get out of all your clothes.”

 Adam raised an eyebrow.

 “Don’t start, Parrish—you put it on, you accept the consequences.”

 By the time they were in bed, Adam had forgotten about Christmas.

 

**III**

 

Ronan had been in the kitchen all day, making _way_ too much food for the three of them, even considering Opal’s appetite.

“Why the hell do we need this many potatoes?” Adam asked. He’d been put on peeling duty. 

Ronan looked up sharply. “Mashing potatoes can reduce them in volume by forty fucking percent,” he said. “Hey, I forgot the smoked salmon.”

“Why the hell do we need _smoked salmon?_ ”

“Appetizers, Parrish, Jesus. Can you just go get some?”

He must have been watching Chopped again, Adam thought. “Why don’t you dream it?” he asked. “I can watch the food.”

Ronan scratched at the stubble he’d allowed to go unshorn that morning. “Uh. Don’t think I’d get it right.” This sounded suspicious to Adam, since Ronan was usually eager to brag about how good he was at making stuff up when he had to (“Remember how good I was at spouting bullshit for Milo’s test essays? It’s like _that_.”) But if he wanted to be alone for some reason, Adam wasn’t going to question it.

“Okay,” he said, taking the keys down from their hook by the door. “Don’t burn it down while I’m gone.”

Ronan threw a sharp grin at him over his shoulder. Adam saw a spark of real mischief in his expression.

It was slow going with the roads so packed with snow, and Adam had to drive all the way to the awful Whole Foods knockoff next to Aglionby’s campus. It was strange to pull into the lot in the BMW. He passed the little metal rack he’d always chained his bike to with a strange mix of nostalgia and nausea.

He felt himself falling into the same old defensive attitude as he walked through the sliding glass doors—immediately scanning the store for other students, who would see him paying with faded bills instead of a sleek credit card. There was a gaggle of boys standing around the lone open cash register. Each one seemed to be trying to talk loudly enough to catch the attention of the girl scanning their items and not meeting any of their eyes with determination. Despite the fact that they exemplified all of the traits of Aglionby boys that Adam had always hated, he felt a little sorry for them. Christmas Eve, and they were stuck on campus with their flashy clothing and unlimited credit cards. He had begun to understand, now in his life, that not every kind of pity you could have for a person depended on their poverty.

He almost had to suppress a laugh as he went through the checkout five minutes later. The boys had left and in the silence, the absurdity of his situation--Adam Parrish buying a package of smoked salmon on Christmas Eve--struck him. He paid with some crumpled bills from the bottom of his pocket unselfconsciously.

The drive home was uneventful until his phone lit up with a text from Ronan just as he was starting down the long driveway: _can u park out front please._ It was very unlike Ronan to text him when they’d be face to face in less than five minutes, and even more unlike Ronan to use the word “please” unsarcastically. Adam was baffled. Maybe the holidays really were taking a toll on Ronan and making him act weird.

Regardless, he pulled to a stop on the section of driveway that ran past the front of the house instead of driving around it to the back. Darkness had already fallen even though it was barely five o’clock.

He didn't notice the the unfamiliar tire tracks in the snow or the inordinate number of boots and coats in the mud room. He didn't even notice, when he came through the door to the kitchen, that the figure standing facing the stove was an inch taller than Ronan and wore a collared shirt.

“Hey,” he said as he dropped the plastic bag containing the smoked salmon on the table. “Did you just make me get this so you wouldn't have to step foot in McNally’s?”

“I like McNally’s,” replied Declan Lynch, turning around to grin at Adam. “They stock multigrain Cheerios.” 

“Holy shit,” said Adam. 

“ _Declan_ ,” came a familiar voice from the doorway to the living room. Adam whirled around to see Blue standing there, hands on her hips. “You ruined the surprise.” 

Declan gestured violently with a ladle. A fleck of gravy landed on the ceiling. “He told me to watch this!” 

“It's okay, I don't like surprises anyway,” Adam said, fighting the gigantic smile threatening to split across his face.

“Oh,” Blue said happily, “Adam, come here.” They hugged tightly. She smelled like cinnamon.

“Do you have Christmas perfume on?”

“Orla gave it to me. She'll be so happy you noticed.”

Over her shoulder, Adam saw two heads poke around the doorway. Their wide eyes and blonde hair matched, as did their jubilant expressions. 

“ADAM’S HERE,” Matthew bellowed. At the same time, Opal leapt from his arms and galloped over, stretching her arms wide around both Adam and Blue’s legs.

“You just saw me an hour ago,” Adam told Opal as he put a hand on her hair.

“I know,” she said. “But now it’s Christmas.” She said the word awkwardly with a pause between the two syllables, like it was new in her mouth.

Gansey and Henry Cheng filed into the kitchen. They looked different than they did over Skype, larger than life and beaming. 

“Merry Christmas, A-P,” Henry said. He was wearing an atrocious Christmas sweater covered in pom-poms. “Did you really think we wouldn’t come see you?”

Adam hugged both of them in turn. Through the doorway he could see Ronan in the living room, poking at the fireplace. Blue and Declan had begun to argue about the proper consistency of gravy, so he drifted over.

“Smoked salmon,” he said reproachfully. “I should have known then.” 

Ronan snickered and shoved another log into the fire. “I felt like such a prick." 

“Why didn't you just tell me people were coming?”

Ronan shrugged. “I wanted it to be a surprise,” he said. “It’s not like you’d let me get you a proper gift.” 

“I said you couldn’t get me a _car_.” 

“Right.”

Dinner was loud and cheery. Declan had brought brightly colored plastic cutlery for Opal in an attempt to teach her to use it correctly, which she gnawed on with gusto. After the meal was finished and they’d done their best on the massive Christmas pudding, they sat in the living room around the roaring fire, talking and drinking. Henry had hung sprigs of mistletoe gifted to him by Maura in almost every doorway, and he managed to steal a kiss on the cheek from everyone over the course of the evening—even a scowling, rosy faced Ronan. 

It was perfect. 

Blue, Henry, and Gansey left for Fox Way around midnight, bearing bundles of herbs for the psychics and organic squashes for Henry. After insisting on doing the dishes, Declan and Matthew each went upstairs to their old rooms. Finally it was just Adam and Ronan left in the living room by the dying fire.

Gansey had persuaded Ronan to put some old Christmas music on the record player, and Frank Sinatra crackled softly through the room. He stood up, swaying just a bit—he didn’t drink much anymore, with Opal to look after, and so his tolerance for the whiskey and eggnog he’d had after dinner had been comically low. 

“Parrish, I’m only going to do this once, because it’s Christmas Eve and I’m drunk,” he muttered, reaching a hand down to where Adam sat.

“Do what?” 

“Just—stand up, okay?”

Adam did, and Ronan caught his left hand in his own and placed his right just below Adam’s shoulder blade.

“ _Oh_ ,” Adam said as he allowed himself to be danced slowly around the room.

“Shut up,” Ronan growled near his ear. 

“I’m not allowed to talk?” 

“Mm,” Ronan said, “you can talk about what a kickass Christmas dinner I made.” 

“It was perfect,” Adam said truthfully as they passed the shining tree. “You’ve set quite the standard for next year, though.”

Ronan was silent, but Adam could tell he was trying to bite back a grin at the idea of _next year,_ at the thought of another year together.

Adam kissed his neck softly. “Merry Christmas.”

**Author's Note:**

> visit me at raventrash.tumblr.com!


End file.
